As explained by Prof. Richard Dawson (Newcastle University) at the iCOASST final conference, the fut

iCOASST; integrating COASTal Sediment Systems

The iCOASST project will help forecast what the UK’s coastline will look like in the future, up to 100 years’ time.

This four-year project brings together a number of UK universities, research laboratories and leading consultants, to develop new methods that will characterise and forecast long-term changes to coastal sediment systems. This work is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and is partnered by the Environment Agency (EA), who will use these methods to improve long-term flood and erosion risk management.

The increasing risk of coastal flooding within the UK, and poor understanding of mesoscale evolution, not just around the UK coast, but worldwide drives this research. The project plans to integrate coastal systems mapping, behaviour landform models and coastal area models to produce a tool that can be used to forecast long term coastal evolution (50-100 years). The consortium has considerable modelling experience, previous work, expert knowledge and data access to progress this research successfully, leaving a legacy that will have pracitical application to coastal erosion and flood management.

We welcome contact from national and international institutes with an interest in this area of research.